The American legal system, as well as some other legal systems around the world, rely on both statutory law and case law (written judicial opinions that interpret statutes and/or articulate uncodified law) to resolve legal disputes. Moreover, the law typically varies based on whether the disputes falls under federal, state, or local jurisdiction. Furthermore, laws change over time. Thus, lawyers are continually called upon to research the law to effectively serve the needs of their clients.
To facilitate their research, many lawyers use online legal research systems, such as the popular Westlaw™ system, as a basic tool. Retrieving information using such systems typically requires users to select one of set of many proprietary databases or information sources and to enter a terms and connectors type query or a natural language query. Specialized search templates for the selected database are sometimes made available to assist the user in formulating the query.
The present inventors recognize that effective use of these system often takes considerable experience and knowledge, given that users typically need some knowledge of which databases to use and how to construct good queries. Indeed, much information that may be useful to a user can easily go overlooked simply because the user was ignorant of where to search. Moreover, the present inventors also recognize that these systems, though quite powerful, lack many control features and conveniences that could make lawyers more effective at their work.
Accordingly, the present inventors have recognized a need for improving online legal research systems.